Common Core began with great promise: broad popular support, the endorsement of policy elites from both parties, boatloads of cash from governmental and philanthropic sources, and adoption by 45 states within a few months of the standards’ June 2010 release.
And yet, more than a decade later, the best-designed study of Common Core’s impact on student achievement found only small, negative effects. No study has documented positive gains that rise to the level of either statistical or practical real world significance.
My recent book, Between the State and the Schoolhouse: Understanding the Failure of Common Core, attempts to describe what happened to that bold initiative.
Media coverage of Common Core followed an arc that mirrored the policy’s fate: perhaps too optimistic at the beginning, but after a few years of documenting the standards’ choppy implementation, a more realistic view of the reform emerged.
I’m no education journalist, but there are some valuable lessons here for the next time a major policy proposal is being presented and adopted: maintain a healthy skepticism, suspend judgment until evidence of outcomes appears, and do not let the assumptions of major policies go unchallenged.